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Iran: US withdrawal from Iraq vital step toward consolidating Baghdad’s independence
Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the US withdrawal from Iraq a vital step toward consolidating the Arab country’s national sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.
The ministry in a statement on Saturday congratulated the people and government of Iraq on the withdrawal of American forces and other foreign troops after more than two decades of disastrous military presence.
It said the 23-year tragedy of the US and allied military presence began with Washington’s aggression against Iraq on March 20, 2003, launched under the false pretext of eliminating “weapons of mass destruction.”
The statement recalled the irreparable consequences of that occupation for Iraq and the wider region, such as the killing of more than one million Iraqis, including tens of thousands of innocent women and children; material damage amounting to several hundred billion dollars to Iraq’s civilian, security and governmental infrastructure; environmental destruction; and heinous war crimes, including the torture of Iraqi men and women at Abu Ghraib prison.
It also said the occupation laid the groundwork for Takfiri terrorism and the rise of Daesh in Iraq and neighboring countries.
It noted that the military presence of the United States and its allies across the region has produced nothing but violence, insecurity, division and terrorism.
The statement came after a US-led coalition deployed in Iraq more than a decade ago under the pretext of fighting the Daesh terrorist group completed its withdrawal from Iraq on September 30, with the last troops leaving a base in Erbil under an agreement between Baghdad and Washington.
The US invaded Iraq in March 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein’ regime. The collation of the US and its allies withdrew their troops in December 2011, but returned in 2014 after Daesh seized large swathes of territory, committed massacres and forced thousands of women and children into slavery.
The group was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019, but coalition forces stayed on to battle the group’s remnants.